Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Er—where is the fight?” Sidroc’s company commander asked. He should have been left on the farm a while longer, too, but here he was.

  “Didn’t they tell you?” asked a fellow on behemothback, and the young lieutenant shook his head. So did the behemoth crewman, who went on, “We’re supposed to make sure Swemmel’s buggers don’t cross over the river line. What do they call that river? The Fliss?”

  “No, the Fluss,” the Algarvian lieutenant said. “But the Unkerlanters already have a bridgehead on this side.”

  Now the men on the behemoths cursed. “Nobody bothered telling us that,” one of them said. “It’s a demon of a lot harder to dig them out of a bridgehead than it is to keep them from getting one in the first place.”

  That was only too true. Sidroc wondered if the Algarvians would call off the attack on realizing they were walking into a saw blade. No such luck; Mezentio’s men didn’t seem to think that way. Sidroc’s company commander said, “We’ll do our duty, of course.”

  “Let’s go do it, then, or try.” The behemoth crewman looked up to the heavens as if he were a Gyongyosian. “They don’t let us know the bridgehead’s already in place? Powers above, sometimes you’d think they really want us to get killed.”

  “Forward!” said the lieutenant with Plegmund’s Brigade. He didn’t blow his whistle, which proved he had some measure of sense.

  Forward Sidroc went. He’d probed Unkerlanter bridgeheads before. Going after one of them was like grabbing a porcupine. But then Ceorl said, “We’ll better drive ‘em back over the river if we can. If we don’t, they’ll flood men through and swarm all over us. They’ve done it before, the whoresons.”

  Sidroc wished he could have disagreed. Unfortunately, the ruffian was right. Sidroc eyed a spot on the back of Sergeant Werferth’s tunic. Right about there, he thought. Aye, right about there, especially if they drive us back. It’ll look like one of their beams.

  The Unkerlanters were indeed on the eastern side of the Fluss, and there in greater numbers than even the men of Plegmund’s Brigade had thought. They had behemoths on this side of the Fluss, too, behemoths that promptly got into a brawl with their Algarvian counterparts and made the Algarvian beasts useless for spearheading any further advance.

  “We have to do it ourselves,” Sidroc said bitterly. “Isn’t that how it always works? Whenever they find a tough job, who do they hand it to? Us, that’s who.”

  “They’d sooner spend us than their own men,” Werferth said, as he had before. Sidroc came close to forgiving him for that—close, but not close enough.

  Before long, the Unkerlanters proved to have enough behemoths on this side of the river not only to keep the Algarvian behemoths in play but also to mount attacks of their own. They lumbered forward to toss eggs at Sidroc and his comrades at a range from which the Forthwegians couldn’t reply. Sidroc went to earth, digging himself in behind a fallen tree. The other men of Plegmund’s Brigade were quick to do the same.

  On came the Unkerlanter behemoths, footsoldiers trotting along behind. “Those men on foot should be up farther,” Sergeant Werferth said from close by Sidroc, as if the Unkerlanters were his troops. “We’re going to make them pay.”

  Sidroc intended to make them pay. He waited quietly in his hole till an incautious behemoth drew too close. Then he flung one of the little pottery-encased sorcerous eggs the Algarvians had been issuing lately. As he’d hoped, it landed right under the behemoth, rolling beneath the animal’s armored skirt before bursting. Mad with pain and fear, the behemoth rampaged back the way it had come, trampling a luckless footsoldier who stood in its path.

  Other Unkerlanter footsoldiers started blazing at Sidroc when he stayed up too long to admire his handiwork. Werferth knocked him down. “Back in your hole, sonny boy,” the veteran said. “We’ll need you next time around.”

  “Right,” Sidroc said. “Thanks, Sergeant.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did he remember how angry at Werferth he was supposed to be. He shrugged. He didn’t have to do anything about it now. If he decided he still wanted to later, he could take care of it. He’d have more chances. He was sure of that.

  Lieutenant Leudast sprang to one side, away from the wounded behemoth that now ran wild, far out of its crew’s control. Trailing blood, the behemoth thundered west, back toward the Fluss River. It would keep spreading chaos through the Unkerlanter bridgehead till its injuries made it fall over or till someone finally killed it.

  “Steady, men!” Leudast called. “Keep up the advance. We can do it.”

  In spite of his words, the Unkerlanter counterattack faltered. The Algarvians and their Forthwegian flunkies weren’t going to be able to smash in the bridgehead and drive his countrymen back over the river. That much seemed clear. The enemy lacked both men and behemoths for the job. But no breakthrough was coming here, either, not until more Unkerlanter men and beasts and egg-tossers made it over the Fluss.

  Little by little, both sides realized they wouldn’t accomplish much, and the fighting tapered off. What point to risking your neck when getting killed wouldn’t get you victory? What point to risking your neck even when getting killed will get you victory? Leudast wondered. He shook his head. That was a subversive thought for a soldier to have.

  Sergeant Kiun said, “I don’t like fighting those fornicating Forthwegians for beans. For one thing, they always fight hard.”

  “They’re volunteers,” Leudast answered. “They aren’t conscripts, the way the redheads are.” He didn’t mention how impressers went through Unkerlanter villages herding young men into Swemmel’s army. He didn’t need to mention it. He’d joined the army that way. So, very likely, had Kiun, and so, very likely, had most of the men they led.

  “Other thing is,” Kiun went on, “they look more like us and they dress more like us than the Algarvians do. That means you’re liable not to figure out who they are till too late.”

  “That’s so,” Leudast said. “It’s not as bad as with the Grelzers, but it’s so.”

  “Grelzers.” Kiun rolled his eyes. “May we see the last of the stinking traitors, and soon.”

  Leudast nodded. He hadn’t had anything in particular against the folk of the Duchy of Grelz before entering it. All he’d known about them was that they had what was, in his ear, a funny accent. Capturing Raniero, the redhead who’d called himself their king, had won him wealth and rank, no matter what it had done to Raniero himself after King Swemmel paraded him through Herborn.

  But fighting Grelzers … At the beginning of the war through the Duchy, some of the men who wore the dark green tunics of what called itself the Kingdom of Grelz had been halfhearted about fighting their Unkerlanter brethren. A good many had thrown down their sticks and surrendered the first chance they got.

  That didn’t happen anymore. With most of Grelz in King Swemmel’s hands these days, the Grelzers who kept on fighting against him were the ones who’d joined the late, not much lamented Raniero because they hated the King of Unkerlant with a deep and abiding passion, not because they’d been looking for advantage from the Algarvians. Few of the ones who wore dark green these days bothered trying to surrender. Few of the ones who did yield went back to captives’ camps.

  With a sly grin, Kiun said, “Bet you almost wouldn’t’ve minded getting chased back over the Fluss, Lieutenant.”

  “You can’t say things like that,” Leudast answered, which didn’t mean the underofficer was wrong.

  “I just thought you’d like to get back to Leiferde and your lady friend there,” Kiun said, his smile disarming now. “I’ve got a lady friend back there myself, matter of fact.”

  “Have you?” Leudast said, and Kiun nodded. “I didn’t think you meant anything you shouldn’t have,” Leudast continued, “but you never can tell who may be listening.”

  Kiun’s grimace said he understood exactly what Leudast meant. King Swemmel saw traitors everywhere. That he saw so many had helped create a good many here in the Duchy of Grelz. It
had probably helped create a good many elsewhere in Unkerlant, too. But any Swemmel could reach suffered for it: a potent argument against treason.

  Captain Recared, the regimental commander, came up to Leudast. “I think things here have settled down for a while,” he said.

  “Aye, sir.” Leudast nodded. “Just one more little fight.” One more little fight I’m lucky I lived through. How many didn ‘t this time? How many have I got left?

  “We’ve held the bridgehead,” Recared went on, and Leudast nodded again. His superior said, “That’s what really matters. Sooner or later, we’ll break out and give the Algarvians another good kick in the teeth.”

  “We’ve given them a lot of kicks, the past year and a half,” Leudast said. “Feels good to be the foot and not the backside.”

  Recared laughed. He’d seemed impossibly young when he first took command of the regiment where Leudast commanded a company. His features were still youthful—he couldn’t have been much above twenty years old— but he’d been through a lot since then, just as all Unkerlanter soldiers had. All of us who are still breathing, anyhow, Leudast thought.

  “You saw how they threw a few behemoths at us and tried to make them count for a lot,” Recared said. “That’s what they’re reduced to these days. They’re still dangerous—I expect they’ll always be dangerous—but we can beat them.”

  They’re still dangerous—but we can beat them. Almost three years before, Leudast had been near the border between Unkerlanter and Algarvian-occupied Forthweg. He and his comrades had been on the point of attacking the Algarvians, but the redheads struck first. After that, Leudast had done nothing but retreat for a long time, till Mezentio’s men finally stalled in the snow of an Unkerlanter winter just outside Cottbus.

  He’d done more retreating the following summer, down in the south, and missed some of the fight in Sulingen because he’d been down with a leg wound that still pained him now and again. But he’d come a long way east since then.

  They’re still dangerous—but we can beat them. It would have seemed absurd in the days when the Algarvians swept all before them. Now it was simply truth.

  “Do you know what I wish, sir?” Leudast asked.

  “Probably,” Recared answered. “You wish you were back on the other side of the Fluss, finding some way or other to be alone with that girl you met there. Am I right, or am I wrong?” He chuckled. He knew he was right.

  And Leudast could only nod once more. “If I live through the rest of the war, I think I’ll come back here.”

  “Who knows whether you’ll think the same way then?” Recared said. “A girl goes to bed with you a few times, you decide you’re in love.” That was cynical enough to have come from an Algarvian’s throat. Before Leudast could say anything or even shake his head, the regimental commander changed the subject: “Do you know, Lieutenant, we’ve been promised a new field kitchen, and it never did show up.”

  “Sir?” Leudast said blankly; this was the first he’d heard about a field kitchen. It was news to him that the Unkerlanter army boasted such things. In the field, even the Algarvians mostly cooked catch as catch can.

  But Captain Recared nodded. “I’ve sent complaints west by crystallomancer, but you know what that’s worth. They might as well be written on the air. I really need someone to look into it. Why don’t you commandeer a horse or a mule or a unicorn and go raise a stink?”

  “Me, sir?” Leudast squeaked. “I’m just a—”

  “You’re a lieutenant,” Recared said. “And you’re not just a lieutenant. Marshal Rathar personally promoted you, and everybody knows why. You’ll have my written authorization, too. I’ll make sure you take it with you.” He smiled a small, thoughtful smile. “The cursed thing is supposed to be somewhere not too far from a wide spot in the road called Leiferde. I expect you’ll be able to track it down in those parts, eh?”

  Leudast stared at him. Recared looked back. No, he wasn’t so young and innocent as he had been. “Thank you, sir,” Leudast said.

  “For what?” Recared answered. “You came back with that field kitchen and I’ll thank you. With it or without it, be back here in three days.”

  “Aye, sir.” Leudast saluted. Leiferde was about a day away. That would leave him a day—or whatever was left of a day after he chased after a field kitchen {was there one somewhere near Alize’s village?)—to do what he pleased. And he knew exactly what he pleased. “Let me round up a mount…” He wasn’t much of a rider, but he would manage. After all, he had an incentive.

  “You do that.” Recared sounded professionally brisk. “While you’re doing it, I’ll prepare your orders.”

  Leudast took charge of a horse that had been pulling a wagon now down with a broken axle. Getting riding gear took rather longer than scaring up the animal. He felt very high off the ground when he rode back to Recared.

  “Here you are,” Recared said. “Now you’re official. Go find that field kitchen—and whatever else you happen to find around Leiferde.” That was as close as he came to admitting he knew Leudast might have anything else in mind.

  Saluting again, Leudast rode off. He wanted to boot the horse up to a gallop, to get to Alize’s village as fast as he could. Only the accurate suspicion that he would fall off on his head long before he got to Leiferde kept him at a more sedate pace.

  Unkerlanter artisans had thrown a couple of quick bridges of precut lengths of timber across the Fluss. Military constables stood at the eastern end of the one Leudast approached. They inspected the order Recared had given him, then nodded and stood aside. “Pass on, Lieutenant,” one of them said, and grudged him a salute. “You are authorized.” He sounded as if he’d turned back plenty who weren’t. He probably had.

  More artisans were bringing up the timbers for another bridge. Leudast waved to them as he headed west past their wagons. He neared Leiferde early the next morning, after sleeping rolled in his cloak by the side of the road. Before going into the village, he went to the supply dump in search of the possibly mythical field kitchen.

  To his amazement, he found a sergeant who knew what he was talking about. “Aye, Lieutenant, your regimental commander’s been bending everybody’s ear about the cursed thing,” the fellow said. “We’re bloody short of draft animals, is the trouble. You can haul it away with your horse there right now, if you want to.”

  “I’ve got some other business on this side of the Fluss I need to take care of first,” Leudast said. “I’ll be back for it tomorrow morning.”

  “Suits me,” the supply sergeant said. “It’ll be ready and waiting.”

  It suited Leudast, too. He mounted the horse and rode into Leiferde. Most of the peasants ignored him: what was one more soldier, after so many?

  He found Alize weeding the vegetable plot by her father’s house. She let out a squeal of delight and sprang to her feet. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  He grinned. “I was in the neighborhood, so I just thought I’d drop by.”

  Nine

  Some people had always turned their backs on Talsu when he walked through the streets of Skrunda. They were the folk who thought no one could come back from a dungeon without giving himself to the Algarvians. Now that he’d come out of the constabulary building without visible damage, more people turned their backs on him. They thought no one could do that without telling the redheads what they wanted to hear.

  Most of the time, Talsu was able to ignore such snubs. But when they came from young men who had been his friends before he was seized, they tore at him, no matter how much he tried not to show it. He sometimes wanted to scream at them. Mezentio’s men grabbed me because I was trying to fight back! echoed through his mind. What have you done since the Algarvians occupied Jelgava? Not a cursed thing, that’s what.

  Holding in his fury led to a bad temper and a sour stomach. “It’ll all get sorted out when King Donalitu comes back,” Gailisa said one evening, trying to soothe him after he’d snarled at everyone in his family.
r />   “Will it?” Talsu asked bitterly.

  “Of course it will,” she answered in the quiet of the cramped little bedchamber they shared. “That’s why he’ll come back—to sort things out, I mean.”

  She had a touching faith in the king. Once upon a time, Talsu might have had a similar faith in Donalitu. He tried to remember when he’d lost it. Before he went into the army: he was sure of that. “If he does come back, he’ll probably throw me in the dungeon for being too friendly with the redheads.”

  That exercise in cynicism got him an appalled look from his wife. “He wouldn’t do such a thing!” she exclaimed. “He’d never do such a thing! The only reason you ever got in trouble was because you wanted to do something to the Algarvians.”

  “Well, let’s hope you’re right about that.” Talsu didn’t think she was, but he didn’t feel like arguing with her, either. He had other things on his mind. The other things ended up making him happy and then sleepy. The bed wasn’t really big enough for the two of them, but they were young enough not to mind sometimes waking up all tangled together.

  They were tangled together when they woke up that night. It was still dark: that was the first thing Talsu noticed. It was, in fact, pitch black. For a moment, Talsu couldn’t imagine why he’d awakened. Then he heard the bells clanging out an alarm.

  “Fire somewhere?” Gailisa asked.

  Talsu listened, then shook his head. “I don’t think so—they’re ringing all over town. That means dragonfliers overhead.”

  “Aye, you’re probably right.” Gailisa untangled her legs from his and got out of bed. “We’d better go downstairs.”

  They’d huddled behind the counter in the tailor’s shop during other visits from Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons. As Talsu got up, too, he said, “I wish we had a cellar here, the way your father does.”

  “Do you want to try to get over there?” she asked.